


Radiance

by blu3mila



Category: Bloodborne (Video Game)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Other, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-29
Updated: 2018-08-29
Packaged: 2019-06-30 04:06:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15743925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blu3mila/pseuds/blu3mila
Summary: A Study of an Artwork and the Relative Chaos it Wrought. To Annaxiin and anyone who finds impalement strangely appealing.





	Radiance

 

Radiance: _A Study of an Artwork and the Relative Chaos it Wrought_  is an essay dedicated to one artwork that left an impact on me through a fascinating chain of events.

The work in question is a creation of _@Annaxiin_ who as of August 2018 seems to have deactivated the account on which it was originally posted. However, its influence lingers and the essay follows, so in the most ironic manner this work undergoes trials of immortality –as nothing can truly be erased from the Internet– and [gets preserved via the reblog I made of it on one fateful night in October](https://sunday-12-25.tumblr.com/post/166120383511/anaxiin-radiance).

 

Relying on my computer’s memory, I first encountered this work around midnight on the sixth of October 2017. At that point, I’ve already spent around two years enjoying Bloodborne and its many fascinating characters, but Alfred in particular never interested me, nor was there any reason to try and change that. However, something did happen on the night I met Radiance.

At first, the artwork did catch my eye, but it didn’t really stop me from continuing to scroll. However, later I found myself coming back to it, feeling something. This feeling hadn’t left me the next day, or the day after; it stuck with me and I became fixated on Something, something I wasn’t yet able to put into words, but that I knew for sure was triggered by that post.

 

What followed this revelation was akin to learning to draw new objects: first you looked at one, tried to break it down into shapes and comprehend the way its parts connect, then you drew it, again and again and again until it all more or less clicked and cemented itself in your brain. That's how I tried to grow accustomed to Alfred and Radiance.

I submerged myself in content on the subject matter (not just Alfred but also Bloodborne as a whole), seeking elements to echo Radiance or that particular Something of my feelings. As a result, I went through an impressive amount of artworks, and when I felt content enough, I started contributing. The first artwork on Alfred the Executioner on my blog was posted the very next day, on the seventh of October 2017. 

 

This situation renewed my interest in Bloodborne and so the time that followed was spent creating artworks, getting familiar with certain characters, developing my own, etc. But time and time again I found myself coming back to the piece that prompted my return to this community and it started fascinating me anew. What was it that first I saw in it? What did it tell me? What did I see in it a year later?

These questions fascinated me, so after spending a significant amount of time digging through my feelings and looking at the artwork, I decided to organize it all in a form of an essay.

To cover this piece substantially, I decided to study it in three parts: composition, context and symbol. These parts are obviously intended to work as a whole, but I am separating them for the time being to pinpoint aspects that otherwise might be elusive.

 

Composition is what I chose to start from since to me it acted as the first layer of this piece. Simply put, it was what I could see at the first time I encountered this work; as I mentioned prior, I was familiar with Alfred’s story only to some degree and cared for it even less. So I saw vibrant red and a sword to the stomach. Perhaps, I thought later, this was enough to develop an art crush, taking into account that I myself were no stranger to self-mutilation and the imagery of that sort always seemed particularly appealing. Once the first impressions were made, I started looking at the composition more thoroughly, in its more primal form.

It is common knowledge in design and art spheres, that the fewer elements a piece contains, the more weight each element holds; this artwork was a testament to that rule. Just like the screaming red background, lines were minimal, concrete and in that absolute. Mostly straight, they communicated that there was no place for compromise, just the cold, or rather red, hard truth.

Outlined shapes: a red rectangle as a whole, a yellow triangle as the focus, a broken pentagon as the weight and a straight sharp sword cutting through the diagonal as something to bring everything together. I recognized the straightforwardness of that the piece, it echoed Alfred’s own personality. The sharp diagonal, the sword to bring his character together was parallel to his own path, ideals and the method to keep it all in check. This observation then led me to the second layer of the work: the context.

 

By context I mean the story of the man depicted here. Alfred the Executioner, the man that appears to be the nicest and friendliest person around the scary-dreary Yharnam city.

For most of the game, we believe the man to be good-natured and willing to help. Sometimes, surely, he sounds obsessed with his own weird form of justice, but who isn’t in this hell of a place? Of course, you don’t have to buy this persona, nor trust him in the slightest, but well, looking past his strangeness and accepting it as a quirk for the sake of help or comfort is quite common. Perhaps this approach is even the one intended by the creators, since the end that Alfred gets acts as a sick twist if you're not expecting it.

Once in Cainhurst, Alfred obliterates Queen Annalise and gives a remarkably passionate speech in regards to this accomplishment. Later, whether you try to talk to the man or not, you find his body in the Cathedral Ward at the spot he first appears in the game, by the altar.

There are many ways to interpret the choice to end his life, madness and guilt being among them, but the version that I personally support is that he simply fulfilled his purpose. He wanted to honour his master as a proper saint and had done so by “killing” Annalise, so the only thing left was to take care of himself. He did just that, perhaps even assigning the status of a martyr to himself.

 

To me, Alfred’s story is a remark on law-justified violence. We know from the start that the man calls himself Executioner and doesn’t try to conceal the specifics of that status. Considering that for a time we are left with very little information, it is rather easy to trust him and, perhaps, agree with his point of view but as the story progresses and the purity of the Church’s ideas gets compromised, it is inevitable that we think on the situation critically.

The remark that I mentioned starts working as soon as the player decides how to treat Alfred after they come to their own opinion. There is an option to agree with him, to disagree and kill him, and, probably the most disappointing one on a societal scale, to not take him too seriously, disapprove but continue cooperating. This take on Alfred has been highly inspirational for me, mainly due to how it resembled life outside Bloodborne, since violence, and more specifically the kind that is closer to undertones, a bit more subtle and not yet physical, often gets looked past in favour of a good relationship.

It seems to be hard to acknowledge this behaviour for what it is, especially when dealing with individual people. Sometimes communication helps a great deal, other times it’s only wishful thinking. To me –and this is not absolute–  it is a responsibility to the self to analyze and recognize the violence you encounter. I am not saying that violence as a whole is unjustified by definition, what I am saying is that you, personally, have to acknowledge it and treat it critically. You cannot make compromises with a policy you disagree with on a fundamental level, you cannot look past “certain quirks” as long as the person treats you well and hope that they will change, or are not as bad as someone else. Again, nothing is as clear-cut as my words might make it seem, but it is the way I choose to look at it.

This approach sounds much more absolute in regards to institutions and not individuals. I believe that it is rightful to challenge institutions that hold power, law and similarly grand concepts and that this should be done with more confidence. I am saying that no matter how eternal, just, or rational a law feels, you have to question it, it by its very nature should not be stagnant, for the society which these laws were built to serve, changes and stands above it. Law is just a system. A system that was built to give a better life to people, and if the people suffer as a result, it is the system that has to change.

 

All of these questions follow me when I look at Alfred. The conflict that Alfred’s obsession creates within me isn’t even about killing Annalise at this point, for Annalise was just an outlet for his violence. Looking at Radiance I come to the opinion that what bothers me most is how all of it has been framed as something justified.

The whole hunt is about killing people, yes, but the executioners are meant to take an immense amount of pride in it, thinking it something holy, presenting their cruelty as justice without a second thought. And whether it was intended or not, Radiance, due to its minimalist nature, doesn’t simply state the fact of Alfred’s suicide. It polishes it, leaves only the main elements and decides that “radiance” should be one of them. What does this choice say? This question brings me to the third layer, where the composition and context unite and shape something new: the symbol.

 

Radiance, being the presumed title of the work, bears a reference to an in-game element, a rune that is found on Alfred’s corpse. Besides the caption, the author echoes the rune’s design through shapes and lines of the artwork.

Radiance in itself is a word with two meanings: the first one being warmth, heat or bright light, and the second - an expression of great happiness, hope, or beauty. The first one feels more fitting in the context of this rune and the executioners; it is, after all, a direct reference to holy imagery with all its heavenly light and absolute belief. However, the second meaning can also fit the story to some extent in the face of Alfred, our seemingly friendly NPC. Altogether, this title was skilfully chosen by the executioners for it echoes something plausible, just and worth all the sacrifices. It makes becoming a martyr in the eyes of the viewers easier. Sceptical as I am after learning more about the Church’s achievements, their radiance sounds almost exclusively staged, ironic.

 

However, this particular artwork doesn’t speak of the same things. This is the benefit of being minimalist because really, it is all about interpretation from now on. And I simply don’t want to read this piece as cynical in spirit. I think Radiance is more than a statement on the fate of the executioners, more individual than institutional, and I see this reflected in Alfred.

A person with a past unknown to us, his goal - the only thing apparent; I read him as someone who built his entire personality around his passion. Like an empty shell that found an ideology, something to hate, he stuffed himself full and let it be his routine.

This opinion is highly subjective, like most ideas related to personalities in Bloodborne, but when trying to understand what kind of person would devote themselves to violence so wholly, I came to the conclusion that it would take someone otherwise empty. Perhaps, instead of looking deeper into oneself, instead of accepting troubles and mistakes life offered him, it was hate he chose to channel himself into, for it takes much less effort to hate than understand. It all can act as a method of coping, something that becomes seemingly obvious in pain. 

I think this was the final gift of Radiance that made something within me resonate with this man. He had emotion, a lot of it, all of it directed in one belief, followed through till the end. Near manic, reasoning had no place in it, it was just something he and himself decided to be and at the very least he remained true to himself, shining with something raw and simple. Whether I chose to agree or disagree with him, I at the very least saw truth in calling it radiance, Radiance. And the painting reflected that wild light in its red tones, the colour of simple task, not life, Alfred, his personality and his passion driven together by the sword that runs through a diagonal, a task, a duty, an execution, a skewer that sloppily but fixes everything together.

 

All in all, it’s been almost a year from the moment I first encountered Radiance. In that time I’ve worked with the source material and followed my inspiration, gathering elements and ideas that felt inexplicably fascinating. One of them was the Bloodletter; it gave me a lot of food for thought and in January 2018 I published an essay on this weapon and its symbols.

Interestingly, during that process I’ve discovered some unexpected connotations between the Bloodletter and Alfred; in the essay I discussed the Bloodletter transformation as a symbolic suicide, something only meant to serve as means of communication (because frankly, the game wouldn’t let us finish the job) and to some extent that situation reminded me of Alfred, considering how performative everything he did seemed. The connection might have been subjective, but it led me to another thought: it was something my interests had in common. 

I'm bringing it out right now because Radiance has been crucial to this development. Looking back at it, it seems to me that this work told me what I needed to hear back in autumn. I still cannot explain what it was, but it influenced me: it made me experience something that caught my attention, something that I started analyzing and as a result developed into a whole new interest.

 

One of the reasons for writing this essay was this very train of influences. As an artist I enjoy creating and communicating, I try to convey messages with my work, but it is a given that once an artwork is published it starts its own new life that author’s authority doesn’t always reach. Simply put, the artwork’s influence isn’t regulated by the author. People can encounter the work and feel something that the creator wouldn’t even expect, much less place there intentionally. This is where the communication in art comes in; I personally believe that art is something meant to be shared and however indirectly co-authored by every person that builds an interpretation of it. And as a viewer with an interpretation, I feel the need to respond to the author, to somehow flesh out my understanding of the piece but not with a goal to make a new piece, but to complement the original, underline that one work can include all of these interpretations.

My interests shifted from where they were last autumn, I am open for new things, but the experience that I had with Radiance has left a trace on me, is still leaving one as I’m writing this essay, and in this I see the beauty of sharing. So, to you, the Author, my deepest gratitude for sharing your work and making this encounter possible. To me, the Viewer, my deepest admiration for being open and willing to change, yet dedicated and willing contribute. To you, the Reader, my honest encouragement and hope that you too one day will respond to another person’s creation and develop something unexpected and gratifying out of it.

Thank you.


End file.
